


war of hearts

by spookysp_ace (summermoonsdawn)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, HaikyuuAngstWeek2020, Hanahaki Disease, Hospitals, Illness, M/M, Unrequited Love, blood mention, death mention, i once again have taken poetic liberties, mind i added a little to the end :"), or so Semi thinks :"), please mind the tags, posted from my thread on twitter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27402994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summermoonsdawn/pseuds/spookysp_ace
Summary: || HaikyuuAngstWeek2020 || day 4 || broken promises, illness ||Coughing up flowers felt like knives scraping his throat. Like fiberglass sinking into his vocal cords. The hyacinths(playfulness), with its long stems and hundreds of red petals came up more easily than the clusters of bergamot(hopelessness, restful sleep, protection from illness).
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou/Semi Eita
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17
Collections: Haikyuu Angst Week 2020





	war of hearts

**Author's Note:**

> posted from my twitter thread, you can read [here](https://twitter.com/spacedaichi/status/1324158055018319873) as well as my other pieces for HaikyuuAngstWeek2020 that i'll link at the end.
> 
> if you read this on twitter already, note that i added a little to the end...
> 
> please listen to [war of hearts (acoustic)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5paJrsIkqg&list=RDq5paJrsIkqg&index=9) before reading :"")) or during, whatever you want.

❁

Coughing up flowers felt like knives scraping his throat. Like fiberglass sinking into his vocal cords. The hyacinths ( _ playfulness _ ), with its long stems and hundreds of red petals came up more easily than the clusters of bergamot ( _ hopelessness, restful sleep, protection from illness). _

Bergamot in its whites, lavenders, and soft pinks.

Bergamot with its pompom shape and ragged edges catching on his tonsils, scraping and falling until his lips were red as the hyacinths. Until blood covered his hands as he tried to catch them from falling and splattering on the stage of a live show, of a live audience.

There wasn’t anything he–or any of the thousands of eyes watching him from their captivated seats–could do as he collapsed on stage, and his vision went dark.

Semi would admit that seeing the red petals ( _ playfulness, playfulness, playfulness)  _ dug every memory of Kuroo’s smiling face to mind.

_ “You’re an idiot,”  _ Shirabu once said.  _ “You need to tell him. Or this is going to kill you. Best case scenario, you get the fucking surgery–but you’re never going to sing again.” _

_ “I’ll tell him,”  _ Semi groused.

_ “Don’t lie to me. Tell him.” _

_ “I promise, just stop looking at me like that.” _

That was two months ago. And why should he tell Kuroo that he loves him? There’s no guarantee that he feels the same way. Zero guarantee of that. 

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Shirabu tells him now, checking the stats of machines by his hospital beds. The monitor's steady  _ wir-wir  _ is like a certain white noise Semi uses to go to sleep at night. 

“Semisemi, he’s right,” Tendou agrees from the opposite side of the room.

Semi scoffs, one that fell into a bout of coughs, blood lining the map of his mouth. He rolls his head on his pillow, wishing for a moment he had the energy to turn over and suffocate himself in the firm fabric. 

He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was the garble of scratched records and the beginnings of a vow that he would never sing again.

“Schedule,” he started, pain erupting in the back of his throat–another series of coughs fell from his lips, “Schedule the surgery.”

“Get these fucking things out of my body.”

Shirabu and Tendou shared a look–one that said they knew something, that they weren’t saying  _ something _ . He decided to ignore it and tried instead of to focus on the drips of morphine that were coming through his IV.

“Fine,” Shirabu grumbled. His eyes narrowed at Semi. “I’ll inform the surgeon.”

The younger man’s glare remained as he gestured for Tendou to step into the hall with him.

The silence enveloped Semi, wrapped like the blankets sitting over his legs. 

_ It’ll be over soon. _

He wouldn’t be able to sing, on stage, professionally–for an audience, for anyone, or himself–again but it would be over. Leaving the cavern of rooted plants in his chest would mean they’d climb and seed on his vocal cords, and eventually suffocate him–like they tried to at his show earlier. The surgery, too, held the likelihood of destroying his throat. The surgeons would go in, with their scalpels like garden hoes, and cut away at the roots that clung to him like their oxygen.

There was no other choice.

_ (Hopelessness–) _

Even if it meant he’d never step on stage again.

He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes, the dark night that had been falling outside was waking with dawn.

There was a knock, at the door, startling a cough from his body.

The door opened, and there–

Stood Kuroo. His hair was more wild than usual, falling back across his scalp like he’d been running his hands through it on repeat, in quick, nervous succession. Dark lines were stamped under his eyes.

“Semi…” He breathed. 

“Why are you here?” Semi must have looked terrible–confused, awful, worn. He’d never wanted Kuroo to look at him the way he was now. Distressed. Unsure.

Kuroo bit at his lip. The skin tugged until they bloomed red from the ministration under the bone of his mouth. 

_ (Playfulness–) _

An echo of laughter tickled the edges of his memory and consciousness. 

“Your sister called,” he said.

God, he was going to kill her.

Kuroo stepped through the doorway, crossing into Semi’s hospital room–into his carefully constructed bubble. His one, two, steps closer nearly broke the wall of resolve Semi had settled on building for months.

Semi laid his head back, staring at the white of the ceiling. The fluorescent light flickered for a second, like the movement in his chest of flowers shifting and growing–digging, rooting in the cavity of his lungs.

“And Tendou–”

And kill Tendou too as soon as he came back.

Semi pressed the ball of his palms into his eyes–pressed deep until the red behind his eyelids was a mirage of the hyacinths in his chest.   
  
“Tendou called. There’s a video. Of you, collapsing, on stage. I took the first flight I could catch.”

Semi kept his mouth closed, jaw tight.

“Were you going to tell me?” Kuroo pulled a chair from nearby, taking his place in it. Taking his place at Semi’s side. “I promised I’d be here for you. I didn’t mean that just as your manager.”

Through sleep stained eyes, Semi watched the other–trailed his eyes over the expanse of his tense shoulders, white button-up wrinkled like he’d thrown it on quickly, down to his forearms and hands to the very tip of his fingers. If he was going to lose his voice, his feelings for Kuroo, he wanted to at least print the image of his form onto the canvas of his mind.

Maybe one day he’d write songs about love lost, lovelorn emotions pouring through words. Even if he wasn’t going to be the one to sing their melodies. 

_ (Restful sleep–) _

Semi cleared his throat. Heavy, he could feel a cluster of bergamot starting up his esophagus. He tried to ignore it, and said instead, “Sometimes, we break promises.”

“Then let me help,” the other implored, grabbing Semi’s hand. Long fingers flitted over the intravenous tube veining from his own pale hand. “I don’t want to break any promises.”

“You can’t help.”

“Who?” Kuroo asked, pushing past Semi’s barriers–he always had. He’d always done it so easily too. His tone wasn’t imploring, now. It wasn’t begging, or demanding. His tone ached, and Semi’s chest ached with it. “Semi, you have to tell them.”

“Why?” He asked. “Why should I?”   
  
“Because you could  _ die,” _ now Kuroo urged, begged. His body collapsed forward, to Semi’s hand, holding it to his face. His breath was in tatters over Semi’s skin, mirroring an x-ray of Semi’s chest. “Please,  _ Eita,  _ the risk of telling them  _ has  _ to outweigh whatever outcome the surgery could have. I promised I’d be there for you and I can’t be here for you if you’re  _ dead.  _ And I– _ ” _

Hazel eyes, swirling liquid gold, pinned him down–as if he had anywhere he could go or run, because he wanted to run, run so far, he  _ couldn’t _ , couldn’t tell him.

Kuroo had, once promised that–as a friend, as his co-manager with Tendou, as his–

As his what?

They were never dating. They were never romantic. No matter how badly Semi had wanted, no matter how many nights out with friends he’d wished it was just the two of them–despite Kuroo’s  _ flirting,  _ flirting he did with everyone, he couldn’t have this. He never believed he could, there was no use in trying to think, or give himself hope, to believing that now. 

_ “I’ll be here through every moment,”  _ Kuroo had said one night, his promise.  _ “I swear. You can’t get rid of me that easily, Semi Eita.” _

Then he’d shaken his head, elbows propped on the dark balcony of space he shared with Semi. His eyes had gleamed, so beautiful and sweet, and fucking  _ kind  _ despite how much he teased Semi.

_ “Your stubbornness will be the death of you one day,”  _ Kuroo continued, nudging Semi’s side, mirth dancing in multiple pirouettes in the flecks of his gaze.

“You were right,” Semi said. Dust fell on his vocal cords, dirt churned, and bergamot grew faster. “My stubbornness will be the death of me.”

“Eita–”

“Kuroo,” he sighed, “I’m  _ tired, please–” _

Kuroo’s lips caressed the back of Semi’s hand. Calloused palms met with calloused fingers. “At least tell me why you won’t.”

The warmth from Kuroo’s palm felt like sunshine and fertilizer for the flowers in his chest. 

_ (Protection from illness–) _

If his hospital bed was anything–it was both his deathbed and a garden bed. 

“Because you’ll hate me.”

“You don’t know that–”

The last bits of his energy scrounged up, toppled over the tension his shoulders, before shedding in the liminal space created between them. 

“ _ Because,”  _ Semi lamented, “Because–I love  _ you.” _

_ (Playfulness, playfulness, play–) _

_ “Wait,  _ me?” Kuroo’s eyes widened. “You love  _ me _ –”

Semi’s chest seized up. Spines of bergamot climbed higher and higher. A round of coughs wracked from his lungs and petals, roots, stems, fell from his throat in his lap, overtaking whatever words were coming from Kuroo’s mouth.

Coughing up flowers felt like knives scraping his throat.

The sound of their falling scattered Semi’s world in pieces. All he knew then, was the  _ wir-wir  _ of hospital machines. Like white noise before he fell asleep at night, it crackled through his ears.

Then darkness shed over his eyes. Kuroo’s voice shouted through the haze, screaming for the doctor.

Kuroo’s hand never let go of Semi’s.

_ (Playfulness.) _

_ Please,  _ Kuroo begged,  _ Please help him– _

_ (Hopelessness, restful sleep, protection from illness.) _

_ Please– _

_ I love– _

❁

**Author's Note:**

> my [twitter](https://twitter.com/spacedaichi)
> 
> my angstweek [thread](https://twitter.com/spacedaichi/status/1323465323501228032)
> 
> sorry :"")) really did think my next kurosemi piece wouldn't be angsty but here we are :"))


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